The Modern Woman's Survival Guide

The laws of nature dictate that when one sleeps with a member of the opposite sex long enough, they will get emotionally attached. This ladies, is what makes the convenience of having a regular “FB” (and no, I’m not talking about Facebook) virtually impossible.

As a woman who has no current interest in a relationship, I’m not impartial to the odd well timed one night stand. I love leaving the next morning and walking down the street with a bounce in my step looking like the cat that got the cream.

But too many one night stands and I would start to feel like a tart. I could also do without having to navigate strange men’s bedrooms praying that they have clean sheets; avoiding the awkward exchanges with their flatmates in the hallway whilst running to the toilet in the middle of the night with nothing but a sheet wrapped around my naked body; and also searching for my knickers in the cold hard light of day, so I can put the rest of my clothes on and get into a taxi.

Enter the FWB – Friends With Benefits. Whereas an FB is a straight sexual transaction (you’ll be pushing it to get breakfast in the morning), the FWB is no strings attached sex, but with the added bonus of being able to go to a movie together, do dinner and have an actual friendship. The FWB is one step away from the SBF (surrogate boyfriend), but that’s another story in itself.

But it’s usually nothing more than a concept, because in reality it will nearly always go pear shaped (just ask Jerry and Elaine). However, occasionally, v. occasionally, someone is able to pull off casual sex without eventually wanting more than a good shag on Wednesday night. Yes, they can act like a lady, yet have sex like a man (thanks to Steve Harvey for helping me to coin that phrase).

Well, that woman is me. Somehow in my 30s, I have the act of casual sex down to an art form. I can do the mercy shag with a friend, have one night stands and even repeat sex with the same person, without getting emotionally attached. How do I do it? Besides being rather emotionally closed off to romance, I know how to choose the right subjects and how to outsmart oxytocin. Oxy what, you ask? Well, there’ll be more of that in my book (I do apologise for being like a reality TV show – “we’ll be back just after this break to tell you whose been evicted”, but I know you’ll forgive me).

I’ve had my FWB since 2007. We’re the best of friends, hang out, look out for each other, and, oh, we have sex too. He’s the relationship without the relationship. Now, many of my friends think he is a real catch – and he is. But we could never be with each other romantically, and we both get that. We are more like best friends on school camp together, sneaking up to the top bunk in the middle of the night with our torches and counting out our lollies together . I am sure if we hung out when we were 8, we would have ridden down to the lake together to catch tadpoles after school. Oh, and, yes, we do a lot of laughing together. Like last night when we walked down to the 7/11 in the middle of the night to buy slurpies, whilst retelling jokes from the Steve Harvey stand up we had just watched.

There is no romantic commitment and we’re both free to sleep with other people (but our friends are off limits, because that would be just wrong). Not that we do sleep with other people all that often, because, let me tell you, we got it going on in the bedroom. There’s no head damage, no expectations of each other, no hour long phone calls to friends analysisng where it’s going, and wondering if one of us has feelings for each other (yes folks, I did that a lot in my 20s). And, no, I’m not in denial. It just is.

Come on, surely there must be a chance between the two of you? Everything sounds so peachy keen, you must have thought about something more with him. Well, sure, I am sure both of us would have considered it at some stage early on, but now, we both emphatically know that we’d drive each other nuts. Like really nuts. I could tell you all the ways he irritates the hell out of me, and the things I do that get him going, but then we’d just sound like an old married couple. We’re just wired differently, and we accept that. I like calm and easygoing, and he can be uptight ( he would beg to differ and will probably yell out, no, I’m not, when he reads this, but he is). Don’t worry, it won’t end our friendship, actually, it’s a bit of an injoke between us.

Sure, I will probably flip out when he meets someone who he wants to be in a relationship with (I know Katie is on standby for that phone call), and vice versa . That’s only natural. There’s still a bond between us that will be broken when one of us finds someone else, but we’ll both genuinely be happy for each other. Because he deserves someone special, and he feels the same way about me.

Ultimately the reason our arrangement works is because of who we both are and where we are both at, and I concede it’s a rare combination. I too have tried casual sex in the past (namely my 20s) and seen the best of intentions unravel. The key to a successful casual sex arrangement is choosing the right person, who understands that there also needs to be respect in the situation, which is why I much prefer an FWB to an FB in my hour of need.

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